Anti-SC Army

[Lex]

spamming drainlife would be good, except its D4, making it tough to come by.

What about having a 6 casters do quickness and 4 frozen hearts. That's 120 armor negating non-resistable damage per round, with 100 precision. The range is crappy (20 i think), but after the third round, if you haven't routed, the SC should be pretty much dead (which is good, cos with only W1, they'd be close to exhaustion after casting it 4 times in two rounds). the real advantage is that W1 casters are really easy to come by, and almost every race has them (from a random). So it "should" be easier to get a group of W1 casters in midgame then a group of D4 casters.

Edit: if you recruited a sage every turn, by midgame you'd have enough sages with W1 to form an anti-SC group. Give them some undead or lifeless fodder, and you've got an insanely cheap SC killer!

Of course the counter to this would be to send other mini-SC or troops with the main SC. This would absorb some of the frozen hearts, and by the end you might not kill the guy you wanted to, if any... of course its easy to counter this counter: you just get more casters (12 W1 sages on this script can obviously take out twice as many SCs!)

[Yvelina]

Yes, but while drain life cannot be resisted by any means, many, many of the tough guys are immune to cold... and even when they are not, cold immunity is really easy to get.

[quantum_mechani]

Mandragora, carrion beasts, ect. are also a very good counter. Leech works much like drain life but mages to cast it are much easier to come by.

[Lex]

i just tested it.. the frozen hearts, like anything else, can be easily resisted almost all the time with high magic resistance. I had a Wyrm sit there taking 20 frozen hearts per round, and with 26 MR and regeneration, it never lost any health.

ah well.. so much for that idea

[Cheezeninja]

Petrify and Drain life are the best Anti-Sc ranged spells i believe. Petrify because a success is instant death and a failure is still parylization. There's also a death magic item that gives the ability to cast drain life, and also makes the AI more willing/likely to cast it (skull standard?). Some sample armies might be...

Vanheim

Living statues to provide lifeless (important against life draining SC's) and tough support.
Van commanders to cast false horror (more lifeless support, thats also free)

This would be the front of your force that's used as a screen for several dwarfs casting summon earthpower then petrify over and over.

*OR*

Blood nations

A literal horde of vampires. They are immortal, undead (dont provide life), flying, and their attack is a lifedrain.

*OR*

Death nations

A group of D4 mages set to cast drain life/summon skellies/drain life/summon skellies/drain life. With a little skeleton chaff in front to keep them alive until their own skeletons are enough of a shield.

Pangea could also be very good at casting petrify, petrify, petrify, relief, etc... with maybe some living statues out front to hold the enemy up.

Basically i believe a SC killer army should attempt to include a combination of lifeless troops, because SC's feed on meatbags, and also a armor piercing non resistable spell. Prefferably petrify or drain life, although there are others that rely on the SC not having that resistance.

Alteration btw gets you both of my favorite anti-SC spells, plus a bunch of chaff spells, not to mention all the spells YOUR SC's should be using. Its my favorite path aside from possibly conjuration...or construction....or maybe thaumaturgy.... possibly enchantment for the Go*'s...wrath is nice too....and bloods not even a path, its more like a college of its own....sigh.

[Yossar]

Cheezeninja said:
A literal horde of vampires. They are immortal, undead (dont provide life), flying, and their attack is a lifedrain.

Actually, they aren't lifeless so they do provide life. But they are pretty decent units, esqcially if your opponent isn't using a staff of storms. One of the best ways to get SCs is to take them out before/while they're buffing. Devils and vampires can be pretty good at that depending how protected the SCs are.

[Lex]

hmmm.. do you think investing points into an Air9 Bless is worth it? It wouldn't work with every race, but if you had an army of sacred units that are almost immune to lightning, Wrathful Skies would become your best friend (gem income permitting). It seems like a big points investment though..

[Boron]

Lex said:
hmmm.. do you think investing points into an Air9 Bless is worth it? It wouldn't work with every race, but if you had an army of sacred units that are almost immune to lightning, Wrathful Skies would become your best friend (gem income permitting). It seems like a big points investment though..

wrathful skies can be negated too by lightning resistence .

as i already said and cheezeninja too the spells against which you can't resist are your best bet

the false horrors shouldn't work too well because they have a mr-negates attack + many scs have fireshield which should kill them too easy .

but against undeads dust to dust etc. is good.
against all drain life , bane fire , gifts from heaven always work

and some of the mr-negates spells are really good too especially petrifiy because it makes the scs at least immobile and if they fail one mr-savethrow they are dead

all in all though not too many methods to surely kill a sc come to my mind :
only the above mentioned spells drain life , bane fire , gifts from heaven

creatures :
a vampire horde / ghost horde

and of course antisc-scs .

what works in most cases too but can be unlucky or very expensive :
screens of lifeless creatures ( undeads , the earth constructs like living statues )

petrify , soul slay , charm , enslave mind



all in all you either need :
for spells :
E3S1
D3F
D4
(B1)

for creatures :
D4B3 for vampires
D5 for costeffective autosummonghosts from wraithlords

that makes death/earthmages most desireable as battlemages .

for a few nations this creates problems :
marignon
man
tien chi (expect s&a)

these 3 nations are somewhat magically really inflexible and have no easy sc counters .

[Graeme Dice]

Cheezeninja said:
A literal horde of vampires. They are immortal, undead (dont provide life), flying, and their attack is a lifedrain.

Undead do provide life when drained. It's only units that are specifically marked as lifeless that do not, and vampires aren't lifeless.

[Graeme Dice]

Lex said:
i just tested it.. the frozen hearts, like anything else, can be easily resisted almost all the time with high magic resistance.

Magic resistance has no effect on frozen heart.

I had a Wyrm sit there taking 20 frozen hearts per round, and with 26 MR and regeneration, it never lost any health.

What other items and magic did you have on it to bring its magic resistance up to that level.